Rumour: Jeep India to launch petrol Wrangler & Grand Cherokee

This is a discussion on Rumour: Jeep India to launch petrol Wrangler & Grand Cherokee within The Indian Car Scene, part of the BHP India category; Jeep appears to be planning to launch petrol variants of its SUVs that are currently on sale in India - ...

Jeep appears to be planning to launch petrol variants of its SUVs that are currently on sale in India - the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee. The American automaker has already imported a few petrol variants of the Wrangler and the Grand Cherokee into India, pointing towards a nearing launch. The two SUVs, which were launched with the Jeep brand's debut in the country earlier this year, are currently available only with diesel engine options.

The petrol Wrangler is expected to be offered in the 5-door Unlimited guise, similar to the diesel model currently on sale in India. It will likely be powered by a 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 engine that develops 285 BHP and 352 Nm of torque. This engine is expected to be mated to a 5-speed automatic gearbox.

Meanwhile, the petrol Grand Cherokee will probably be equipped with the same 3.6-litre Pentastar V6 unit from the Wrangler. However, it will use a different state of tune to develop more power. The Grand Cherokee petrol will use an 8-speed automatic gearbox.

Why are they even bothering? At most, it'll be a couple of lakhs cheaper than the diesels and still be obscenely overpriced. I can't think of too many customers who'd want a Wrangler for offroading (Thar will do just fine, thank you), while you can buy 4 Endeavours for the price of 1 Grand Cherokee. The Endeavour is 99% the car that the Cherokee is.

Or is it that Jeep is completely disconnected with the Indian market? Don't they know that we love our SUVs in diesel?

Why are they even bothering? At most, it'll be a couple of lakhs cheaper than the diesels and still be obscenely overpriced.

Rumour is that the petrol Grand Cherokee will be priced around 15 lakh rupees cheaper than it's diesel sibling, while the petrol Wrangler could be priced at least 18-20 lac rupees cheaper than it's diesel counterpart. (link)

If not for anything else, it could be to advertise a lesser sticker price for the range, now that they have watered so many eyes with their exorbitantly priced diesels.

Also, there is a small but significant section of the car-buying crowd which is leaning towards petrol-powered SUVs.

If they manage to squeeze out a few sales from this exercise, nothing quite like it.